Constitutionality of light bulb ban questioned - Environmental Protection Agency must be called for

[Paul M. Eldridge]

I like my old Philips TLD36W/92 here in Sweden.
It still work perfect in my kitchen since 1990.
http://tekniken.se/misc/philips_tld36w-92.jpg
Specifications: 2700K, CRI 95, 63 lm/W

Hi Ken,

Very nice specs. The only thing I know that would come close to
matching that in CCT (and it may now be a discontinued product), is
something Sylvania sold called "The Incandescent Fluorescent". It was
a 40-watt T12 lamp with a CCT of 2,750K and a CRI of 89 or 90, if I
recall correctly. In its day, the quality of the light it provided
was a huge improvement over a standard warm white tube (52 CRI) and
warm white deluxe (mid to upper 70s) -- so good, in fact, many
photographers could use tungsten rated film with this lamp and get
outstanding results. I liked this lamp a lot, but it only provided
1,500 lumens using standard control gear (~ 34 lumens per watt).

Bäst hänsynen !
Paul

 

[Dan Lanciani]

|
|
| > In the past few years I've noticed that the commodity F40 and F96 tubes
| > at the home centers are once again 40W and 75W respectively, so I assume
| > they all now qualify for the good color rendering (or other) exemption
| > from the requirements. (Or are they lying about the wattage?)
| >
| > Dan Lanciani
| > ddl@danlan.*com
|
|
| Trichromatic phosphor blends are much more common these days and a lot
| cheaper than they used to be, so you can easily get 40W high CRI lamps.

And 75W F96 tubes, though they cost a little more than the dirt cheap CW
versions did. I guess this is great if you like a high color rendering
index, but I'm still not clear on how it ultimately helped with energy
conservation or efficiency. Now if they had gone on to produce 34W F40
and 60W F96 tubes that put out as much light as the older 40W and 75W
versions I could see the justification for the higer costs, ballast
replacements, and such in the meantime. But as it is, aren't we pretty
much back where we started (from an energy usage point of view)?

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

 

[Jeff Strickland]

WASHINGTON - Members of Congress are beginning to have second thoughts
about the ban on incandescent light bulbs effective in 2014 as a
result of an energy bill signed into law earlier this year.

Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, says his objection is very basic - the
Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to do anything remotely like
banning a product that has been used safely and efficiently for more
than 100 years in favor of Chinese-imported compact fluorescent light
bulbs that pose considerable health and safety risks.

Poe cited the dangers associated with CFLs, which carry small amounts
of mercury that can enter the environment through breakage and
disposal. He also objected to reliance on the CFL alternatives when,
currently, all are made in China.

"Congress passed an energy bill that should be called the
anti-American non-energy bill because it punishes Americans for using
energy when it should be finding new sources of available energy," Poe
stated.

First point is that incandescent bulbs are not efficient, therefore they
have not been used efficiently for more than 100 years. They HAVE been used
effectively, but not efficiently. That's the point of CFLs, they provide
more light using less power -- which is the very definition of efficiency.

As for CFLs being made in China, so what? New sources of American Energy are
nukes (blocked by environmentalists) wind energy (blocked by
environmentalists) solar energy (blocked by environmentalists) and
coal-based energy (blocked by environmentalists).

America needs 30 new power plants to up the capacity and replace aging
plants. Europe has been using nuke energy for a long time, and they have no
problems with it. But enviromentalists in this country object to it. America
has a few windmill farms, but environmentalists object to them because birds
fly into the vanes, and the NIMBYs object to the view. Solar energy is being
tried in a few places, but the environmentalists object to the space they
demand and the resulting encroachment on habitat. And, we have lots of coal
fired power plants, but environmentalists object to the coal mines and the
soot that is produced.

The American Southwest looks like it will be building new homes within the
next decade that are Zero Net users of electricity. These homes will be
built with solar collectors on the roof that will be able to generate
upwards of 10kW, and this will be more than the home needs for most of the
year. Each home will actually generate power that goes to the grid and the
home will get credit on the electricity bill. The credit will then be drawn
against on days when the air conditioner is used, resulting in an overall
zero pull from the grid for most homeowners. I'm sure the environmentalists
will figure out a complaint to lodge ...

 

[Calab]

WASHINGTON – Members of Congress are beginning to have second thoughts

about the ban on incandescent light bulbs effective in 2014 as a
result of an energy bill signed into law earlier this year.

*sigh*

There is a *VERY* simple way to deal with energy consumption,
greenhouse gases, climate change and human impact on the environment in
general.

Instead of throwing all taxes into a collective pot, tax items at their
cost to clean up... at their cost to the environment.

Some examples...

Gasoline:
Using gasoline causes greenhouse gases and air pollution in general.
Remove all general taxes from it's sale and add a single "cost of use"
tax. A gallon of gas would be taxed on what it costs to clean the
noxious pollution from the air.

Tires:
They pollute the roadways with cast off rubber. The worn out tires need
to be processed before recycling or being disposed of. Tires would be
taxed based on their mileage rating and treadwear. Basically, take the
expected milage of a tire and divide it by amount of material cast off
of the tire during it's life.

i.e. 100,000 mile tire, 10 lbs of rubber cast off during it's life:
10/100= tax rating of .1

50,000 mile tire, 10 lbs of rubber cast off during it's life:
10/50= tax rating of .2

Garbage collection:
Operating expenses are $xxx per year for garbage collection. It also
costs $yyy per pound to process garbage. In a perfect world, you'd pay
a yearly "garbage" tax to cover operating expenses and then you'd pay
another tax to cover the amount of garbage you produced. Unfortunately,
keeping track of the amount of garbage used by each property isn't
easy, so taxes would be based an average.

Users would have the option to use a private company to collect and
process trash and would be exempt from the government trash tax.

.... This could be applied to most government taxation, fees, etc. In
the long run it would simplify taxation and cause consumers to consider
their impact to the environment. To lower taxes, consumers would opt
for items that cost lest to "clean up after".

--
Fight Usenet Spam!!! - http://improve-usenet.org:80/

Want a great newsgroup reader that will filter out the flood of
newgroup spam?
Try MesNews - http://www.mesnews.net/gb/

If you want your posts to be seen, DON'T USE GOOGLE GROUPS!

 

[Paul M. Eldridge]

|
|
| > In the past few years I've noticed that the commodity F40 and F96 tubes
| > at the home centers are once again 40W and 75W respectively, so I assume
| > they all now qualify for the good color rendering (or other) exemption
| > from the requirements. (Or are they lying about the wattage?)
| >
| > Dan Lanciani
| > ddl@danlan.*com
|
|
| Trichromatic phosphor blends are much more common these days and a lot
| cheaper than they used to be, so you can easily get 40W high CRI lamps.

And 75W F96 tubes, though they cost a little more than the dirt cheap CW
versions did. I guess this is great if you like a high color rendering
index, but I'm still not clear on how it ultimately helped with energy
conservation or efficiency. Now if they had gone on to produce 34W F40
and 60W F96 tubes that put out as much light as the older 40W and 75W
versions I could see the justification for the higer costs, ballast
replacements, and such in the meantime. But as it is, aren't we pretty
much back where we started (from an energy usage point of view)?

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

Hi Dan,

Twenty or thirty years ago, a conventional two-tube F96T12 fixture
would draw about 180-watts. Today, with 60-watt lamps and energy
saving magnetic ballasts, that number falls closer to 135 or
140-watts, so there's been at least some improvement.

In terms of operating efficacy, a 75-watt Sylvania F96T12/D41/ECO
(4,100K/70 CRI) is rated at 6,420 initial lumens and powered by a
standard magnetic-core ballast (0.88 BF), we obtain about 63 lumens
from each watt. A 60-watt Sylvania F96T12/D41/SS/ECO (4,100K/70 CRI)
at 5,600 initial lumens and driven by a newer energy saving magnetic
ballast would bump that up to perhaps 71 or 72 lumens per watt.

Things do improve considerably once you move to T8. A 59-watt
Sylvania F096/841/XP/ECO (4,100K/85 CRI) has a nominal rating of 6,100
lumens and a two tube fixture with a 0.88 BF electronic ballast draws
approximately 110-watts -- that puts us in the range of 97 or 98
lumens per watt.

In addition to better colour rendering and higher system efficacy,
there's also a 50 per cent improvement in lamp life (18,000 hrs.
versus 12,000 at 3 hrs per start), plus no flicker or ballast noise;
lumen maintenance is also notably better at 93 to 95 per cent versus
80 to 85 per cent. As an added bonus, T8s typically offer better cold
weather performance (e.g., Sylvania's F96T8 lamps have a 0F starting
temperature when used with Quictronic ballasts).

Cheers,
Paul

 

[dpb]

RFI-EMI-GUY wrote:
....

... The glaring issue is that the gasohol mix
actually reduces fuel efficiency significantly in many if not most
vehicles. For example, my vehicle averages 15 MPG with regular unleaded
... but now with gasohol it now averages 12.5 MPG. ...

That makes no sense. Ethanol has about 80% the energy of gasoline on a
per unit volume basis. Hence a gallon of E10 blend has roughly
0.9*100 + 0.1*80 --> 98% of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline.

Hence, for mileage to drop by more than a few per cent is
unreasonable--you're quoting numbers as if the entire fuel were ethanol
but as if it were only 10%.

If the vehicle actually is requiring much more than that extra 2% on
E10, something's wrong w/ the vehicle; perhaps in the emission control
system sensors.

--

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

Pollution increase - maybe not, likely not - ethanol has been added to
decrease pollution.

Nitrogen oxide emissions tend to be decreased since dilution by ethanol
decreases the combustion temperature.

CO emissions are decreased when fuel is diluted (for leaner burn) in
cars not making heavy use of oxygen sensors to adjust fuel/air mix.

But energy/power from a gallon of fuel is much less with ethanol than
with undiluted gasoline.

Gasoline - from an old figure in the 1961 edition of the CRC Handbook -
20,750 BTU per pound, 6.152 pounds per gallon - multiplies out to 127,654
BTU/gallon.

Ethanol - 327.6 kcal/mole, 327.6 kcal per 46.07 grams, 1,300.029
BTU/46.07 grams, 1,300.029 BTU/58.368 ml, 22,273 BTU/liter, 84,311
BTU/gallon.

MTBE was another agent to "oxygenate" gasoline (I would say "dilute"
with "partially oxidized fuel").


I suspect ethanol addition to gasoline is largely nationwide.

I don't mind biofuels - but the current big Federal program is for
specifically ethanol specifically from USA-grown corn. I think that we
need to lose the restrictions to ethanol from plant species favored by
lobbyists!

I have been hearing good things about ethanol from switchgrass! Also,
biofuel is not limited to ethanol despite what is said by lobbyists from
the cornbelt and especially the ones for Archer Daniels Midland!

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

My vehicle as do many others uses the oxygen sensor in a closed loop to
maintain the stoichiometric fuel/air ratio. My understanding is that the
ethanol tends to make the system believe it is running to lean and thus
compensates by richening the mixture. Whatever the process, this ethanol
is causing a lot of extra fuel to be burned by some if not many vehicles
and it does not make good fiscal sense. I called my dealer's service
manager to ask if he was getting complaints, he said he was getting a
lot of complaints and there was no adjustment to the vehicle to compensate.

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money" ;-P

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

| [email protected] wrote:
|>
|> | You are missing the point. If I buy gas from a Shell station and Shell
|> | has decided to adulterate the fuel with a compound (ethanol) that saves
|> | Shell money and returns less BTU energy content to the consumer. Shell
|> | oil is receiving a direct benefit by immediate increased profit and
|> | later by selling more of the adulterated product so that consumers can
|> | continue on their crippled journey. I don't care what Shell paid for a
|> | barrel of oil on the market, that is not the point. It is a flagrant rip
|> | off, a criminal act that the Florida government is complicit with. If
|> | the public fails to realize this, they are very ignorant, and perhaps
|> | deserve what they get from their government and corporations who run the
|> | government.
|>
|> So provide some proof that this addition of ethanol reduces the total energy
|> per dollar AND emits the same level of pollution per mile driven.
|>
|>
|> | Imagine if you went the store to buy a pound of hamburger, but the
|> | butcher decides that to increase his bottom line, he will take away
|> | about 2 ounces of beef and substitutes two ounces of wet sawdust. Would
|> | you be "OK" with that? That is exactly what is happening here in Florida
|> | and elsewhere with the gasoline.
|>
|> I can imagine a lot of things. I can imagine you are making all this up, too.
|> Show some proof.
|>
|
| Its simple; I have a ton of gasoline receipts from the period before and
| after the Ethanol blend was mandated. I was suspicious after I started
| noticing the fuel economy drop in my vehicle. I have monitored the gas
| mileage and done the calculations. Its all very simple. The vehicle is
| well maintained and I have an OBDII reader attached to the computer to
| monitor gas economy and vehicle performance. Do your own research,
| Google for gas mileage and Ethanol fuel and come to your own
| conclusions. As far as pollution out the tailpipe, that is simple logic.
| If I have to burn 12 gallons of fuel to go the same mileage as 10
| gallons once carried me and 90% of that fuel is gasoline and 10% is
| ethanol, I have a worsened pollution situation in that I am now dumping
| byproducts from the 10.8 gallons gasoline plus 1.2 gallons of ethanol.
|
| If you don't beleive me, look up the BTU energy of gasoline and Ethanol.
| Ethanol has significantly less energy than gasoline.

So basically you are saying that because of the added ethanol, you have to
burn 10.8 gallons of gasoline where once before you only needed to burn 10.
If that 10.8 gallons does in fact produce the same pollution (maybe it is a
different mix and doesn't) per gallon, then, yeah, there is an issue with it.

I already know ethanol has a lower energy per volume or weight. But the big
questions are how it affects pollution and foreign oil dependency. If you
have to burn 10.8 gallons of gas that is otherwise the same as the 10 gallons
burned before, then there is an issue with it.

And that's even before we figure in the cost of producing the ethanol, and
the impact on the economy of the higher price for certain food products.

Yes it does not seem to make a lot of sense on a lot of levels.

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money" ;-P

 

[RFI-EMI-GUY]

RFI-EMI-GUY wrote:
...

That makes no sense. Ethanol has about 80% the energy of gasoline on a
per unit volume basis. Hence a gallon of E10 blend has roughly
0.9*100 + 0.1*80 --> 98% of the energy content of a gallon of gasoline.

Hence, for mileage to drop by more than a few per cent is
unreasonable--you're quoting numbers as if the entire fuel were ethanol
but as if it were only 10%.

If the vehicle actually is requiring much more than that extra 2% on
E10, something's wrong w/ the vehicle; perhaps in the emission control
system sensors.

--

The oxygen sensor in the fuel injection loop is probably seeing to much
oxygen and is compensating by richening the fuel air mixture.

I have gas receipts going back at least two years to present so the
numbers are real. The drop in economy happened when the new fuel was
introduced. I have an OBD II reader plugged into the vehicle at all
times, no error codes. The air cleaner is new, the vehicle well
maintained. There could be other issues like water in the fuel supply
from the dealer tanks.

--
Joe Leikhim K4SAT
"The RFI-EMI-GUY"©

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

"Follow The Money" ;-P

 

[[email protected]]

| In article <[email protected]>, [email protected]
| says...
|> | In article <[email protected]>, phil-news-
|> | [email protected] says...
|> |> | [email protected] wrote:
|> |> |>
|> |> |> I do like the idea of taxing the incandescent bulbs. But I also like
|> |> |> the idea of taxing cheap imports.
|> |> |>
|> |> |
|> |> | Then there are those who are opposed to using tax laws to promote public
|> |> | policy. Taxes distort the marketplace.
|> |>
|> |> And I am not one of those. The marketplace needs to be distorted in a few
|> |> places. The market for subprime mortgage origination comes to mind as my
|> |> first place, if you need an example.
|> |
|> | The market for subprime mortgages is being distorted by a bailout
|> | (and FannieMay). Without a bailout there would be no distortion.
|> | Let 'em sink.
|>
|> Totally unregulated markets are known to have ups and downs that can sometimes
|> get way out of whack. The bailout is to avoid a sinking that would just make
|> it go even further out of whack, or take other markets down with it.
|
| Perhaps true, but irrelevant.
|
|> The regulation I would focus on is to have avoided the whole mess in the first
|> place, and provide for a stable growth. The MINIMUM regulation to achieve that
|> would be my goal.
|
| I agree, but also irrelevant.
|
|> The stupid businesses _should_ sink. But when it's a case of the sinking ship
|> taking other things down with it, that needs to be avoided.
|
| Agreed, but also irrelevant. The *point* is that bailing out those
| who made bad bets allows them another chance to do so and telegraphs
| a terrible message to everyone else. *THAT* is distorting the
| market.

NOT bailing them out just exacerbates the market decline. The correct thing
to have done would be to separate the bad decision makers from any benefits
of the bailout. Unfortunately, laws are not in place to do that effectively.

There needs to be certain regulations on this. Where bad decisions can only
affect ones own profits, the government really has no need to be involved.
But where bad decisions can affect the whole economy, the government has a
genuine interest to be involved.

Generally, bankruptcy proceedings can separate a loser from his losses.
Those who own a losing business get to lose their business that way.
That may well be an adequate remedy for situations like this. But if
more is needed, maybe jail time for the bad actors?

I did suspect this housing mess needs to have some people put in jail. But
the laws may not have made it sufficiently clear to do it this time around.
To the extent that is so, the laws need to change.


|> |> | As for taxing imports, this silliness was settled in the 18th Century in
|> |> | Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations." Smith proved that everybody benefits
|> |> | when nations do what they do best and freely trade with other nations who
|> |> | also do what they do best.
|> |>
|> |> As long as all nations are on a level playing field, this would be so. But
|> |> it is a fact that most nations outside the USA have governments playing a
|> |> hand in the economies.
|> |
|> | It's impossible for a government to *not* have a hand in economics
|> | and silly to think they should (not).
|>
|> How the governments in places like China are managing their economy compared
|> to the USA is a big contrast. It puts the USA in a weak position.
|
| Also true, but irrelevant.

You sure to consider a lot of things to be irrelevant.

 

[[email protected]]

| StickThatInYourPipeAndSmokeIt wrote:
|> On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:48:26 -0500, "HeyBub" <[email protected]>
|> wrote:
|>
|>>
|>> The dirty little secret behind sub-prime morgtages is that they were
|>> CAUSED by government regulation.
|>
|>
|> They were CAUSED by GREED!
|
| Right. Greed is good.

Greed is good only to the extent it motivates people to act within the law.
The law is good when it ensures that greed has no negative impact on the
society as a whole.


| A great worthy once said "If not for greed, no man would marry, build a
| house, or father a child."

Lots of non-greedy people accomplish these things.

 

[[email protected]]

| [email protected] wrote:
|>> [email protected] wrote:
|>>>
|>>> I do like the idea of taxing the incandescent bulbs. But I also
|>>> like the idea of taxing cheap imports.
|>>>
|>>
|>> Then there are those who are opposed to using tax laws to promote
|>> public policy. Taxes distort the marketplace.
|>
|> And I am not one of those. The marketplace needs to be distorted in
|> a few places. The market for subprime mortgage origination comes to
|> mind as my first place, if you need an example.
|
| The dirty little secret behind sub-prime morgtages is that they were CAUSED
| by government regulation. The government required a significant percentage
| of banking and morgtage business to take place in "deprived" or
| "under-served" areas. Absence of a branch bank, for example, on a street
| where the only other retail services were hookers and dope-dealers was
| evidence sufficient of discrimination!

There's a whole lot more than that involved. Some mortgage companies were
not affected by this beyond the extent to which the whole economy was.
Lots of falsified origination took place. Then these instruments were
sold improperly to organizations that didn't properly check them out.


| True, and we can take advantage of their foolishness. If Bangladesh wants to
| subsidize the manufacture of sneakers by 6-year olds such that we end up
| with really swell tennis shoes for two bucks, then I'm all for it.

That's the un-level playing field that can decimate the industries of other
countries.

 

[[email protected]]

|
|
|>
|> But only recently the CPU speed increases have slowed down quite a bit and
|> the advances are more in the form of more cores. The point being that the
|> software doesn't take good advantage of more cores. That will change, but
|> for a while not everything will.
|>
|
|
| More cores sure do help when running multiple simultaneous programs,
| which is far more prevalent than it was a few years back. Also load has
| shifted to coprocessors like the powerful GPUs on modern graphics cards.
| I'm not seeing any slowdown in the technological advancement. Processors
| are still getting faster, hard drive capacity is growing faster than
| ever, a $1,000 PC today provides performance far superior to high end
| workstations of 5-10 years ago. As for the increases in performance
| slowing down, I'll believe it when I see it.

You're not seeing the speed-UP that would have otherwise taken place had there
been no limitation on making single CPUs faster and faster at the same rate
they have been increased in the past. Processor speeds increments are slowing
down around the 3 GHz point. There are faster ones, but the cost spread AND
the heat spread are increasing. We should have been at 6 to 8 GHz CPU speed
by now, otherwise.

 

[[email protected]]

| As for CFLs being made in China, so what? New sources of American Energy are
| nukes (blocked by environmentalists) wind energy (blocked by
| environmentalists) solar energy (blocked by environmentalists) and
| coal-based energy (blocked by environmentalists).

Yes, there are environmentalists blocking nuclear power plants. I happen to
be one of the environmentalists that is NOT blocking them. Instead, what I
am "blocking" is stupidity by corporate executives and managers. Nuclear
power _can_ be safe. But in the hands of corporations that will cut costs
by reducing safety, then nuclear power _can_ be very unsafe. Letting the
government run them would be no better and probably worse. What we need is
a set of strong regulations and regular inspections with public reports.


| America needs 30 new power plants to up the capacity and replace aging
| plants. Europe has been using nuke energy for a long time, and they have no
| problems with it. But enviromentalists in this country object to it. America
| has a few windmill farms, but environmentalists object to them because birds
| fly into the vanes, and the NIMBYs object to the view. Solar energy is being
| tried in a few places, but the environmentalists object to the space they
| demand and the resulting encroachment on habitat. And, we have lots of coal
| fired power plants, but environmentalists object to the coal mines and the
| soot that is produced.

Europe also runs things differently. They have stronger regulations and
actually do inspections by people that have a genuine concern for safety.

We'll never eliminate all environmentalist objections. Europe hasn't, either.
But we can find people who do have genuine environmental concerns and do also
recognize the need for more power. We need these kinds of people to oversee
the whole thing. These people will be neither left-wing nor right-wing on the
political spectrum.


| The American Southwest looks like it will be building new homes within the
| next decade that are Zero Net users of electricity. These homes will be
| built with solar collectors on the roof that will be able to generate
| upwards of 10kW, and this will be more than the home needs for most of the
| year. Each home will actually generate power that goes to the grid and the
| home will get credit on the electricity bill. The credit will then be drawn
| against on days when the air conditioner is used, resulting in an overall
| zero pull from the grid for most homeowners. I'm sure the environmentalists
| will figure out a complaint to lodge ...

There certainly will be environmentalists that will come up with something.

By having some "sensible environmentalists" who don't do such silliness,
things like this, and building nuclear plants, and solar farms, and wind farms
and such, can all be accomplished. Part of the problem, though, is that the
way the environment is dealt with by so many corporations (basically shunning
all environmentalists as a whole) ends up putting all environmentalists on the
same side together. Instead, what we need, is a certainly level of cooperation
to meet in the middle. Then the environmentalists that remain to object (who
probably object to everything) will be fewer in number.

As an environmentalists myself, I do object more to extending the drilling for
oil. I'm in favor of building nuclear power plants (under certain conditions,
such as stronger regulations and regular inspections, including by academic
people, with public reports ... and they must also be built reasonably close
to the areas of power demand, with consideration for risks like earthquakes,
so the ones powering California might have to be built in Utah with some big
DC feeders). I'm in favor of building solar farms (provided they are not
built in such a way as to shadow natural needs for light ... desert spaces
should be OK). I'm in favor of building wind farms.

My objection for oil and gas extraction in general (so my goal is to see less
of it used, not more) is to avoid releasing more carbon that has been naturally
sequestered. Also, known oil reserves won't last for too many more decades or
centuries (pinning down the exact figure is hard, but it's definitely not going
to last a thousand years at the rate we are growing in our use).

To the extent we can make the effort to reduce the need for oil/gas, then
whatever else we do (drilling more reserves or not), it is that much less we
end up depending on politically unstable or even criminal governments who
are the current suppliers.

 

[[email protected]]

| [email protected] wrote:
|>>
|>> Right. Greed is good.
|>
|> Greed is good only to the extent it motivates people to act within
|> the law. The law is good when it ensures that greed has no negative
|> impact on the society as a whole.
|
| We don't punish motivations. Likewise, the law DOES punish those who, with
| the best of intentions, have a "negative impact" on society. It is the
| result of the motivation that counts.

Those with good intentions should only make good (make whole) for their
errors. If they intended to profit from good intentions, and failed to
do so, then they have learned their own lessons. They will act smarter
the next time.

Those with bad intentions should also pay more. If not, they may well
try again to see what they can get away with. That payment can vary from
extra payment beyond making whole, to jail time, depending.

Note, that I do include as bad intentions things like advertising untruths,
and mistakes that could have been avoided were it not for cost cutting.


| Consider Albert Sabin as he hovered over the microscope looking for a polio
| vaccine. The many thoughts running through his mind probably included many
| emotions that people reject: GREED ("If I can whip this, I can do the kind
| of research I want!), PRIDE ("People will shake my hand and say nice things
| about me"), ENVY ("And I'm tired of Jonas Salk getting all the praise"), and
| a whole lot more.
|
| The result, of course, of these despicable emotions was that polio has been
| eradicated in my lifetime.

All these things led in the right direction in his case. It is a case of
greed (or pride or envy) leading to something that benefits everyone (or
at least doesn't impact anyone).

Something I learned about in business many years ago was the difference
between "creating value" and "diverting value". Creating value is when
you create something that benefits at least someone while not harming
anyone. Profiting from it is quite reasonable. Diverting value is when
you profit in some way that takes away from someone. There is a wide
scope of this and not all are obvious. This can include price gouging,
false advertising, anti-competetive actitivties, etc.



|>> A great worthy once said "If not for greed, no man would marry,
|>> build a house, or father a child."
|>
|> Lots of non-greedy people accomplish these things.
|>
|
| Right. The point being that "greed" is not the issue nor should it be
| punished.

A"greed" Greed is orthogonal. It can be good or bad depending on how
it is applied or used. Misapplication should be punished.

 

[[email protected]]

| Beyond a certain CPU speed, other factors have a greater influence on
| thru-put. Connection lengths become important, as do parasitic circuit
| elements. AMD first exploited this in emphasizing CPU architecture
| rather than brute speed. Multiple CPUs and cache memory on chip are
| good examples of this. A CPU cannot operate faster than the rate at
| which data is supplied to it.

Many of these factors are why CPU speed is not increasing as fast as it
used to. We are at a point where speed is an inverse function of size.
So every speed improvement in a CPU now has to have a corresponding size
decrease. That's harder than speed improvements in the past used to be.


| Present 32bit operating systems are not even capable of directly
| addressing over 4GB of memory, even as memory is becoming faster and
| cheaper. There are very few applications that can use the advantage of
| a 64bit OS, even when it's limited to using more memory.

My 32-bit Linux system has no trouble accessing the 8GB of RAM it has.
Your use of "directly" could mean that each actual running program would
have its own such access, and there would be a 4GB limit in that case.


| In Windows XP x64, MS resorted to WoW, (Windows on Windows), to allow 32
| bit application to work properly. (It's still one of the better OSs
| Microsoft has produced.)

But you have to add a 64-bit layer. My 32-bit Linux gives me the advantages
of 8GB of RAM (and I've only populated 4 of the 8 slots, so I could put in
another 8GB, knowing that Linux can handle up to 64GB this way). Microsoft
chose not to go this way with Windows (XP or Vista). Of course, 64-bit is
the way of the future and I'll be doing some 64-bit stuff soon.


| With the present crop of PCs, the eventual bottleneck may become the
| BIOS. It's been twiddled, patched, augmented but still is much like the
| one produced by IBM for the first "personal computer".

There is a "sand castle" of features added on that make the whole architecture
a big mess. I'm referring to the history of things from P&P to ACPI. None of
these were truly clean (but clean would have meant a too disruptive change).


| Getting our computers to do more faster, will depend more on better
| input-output mechanisms and better applications, rather than on faster CPUs.

Agreed. The applications will get better. We just don't have them all doing
that right now. Some do, some don't. And some of the tools meant to help
have some issues (for example POSIX threads did not provide a means to let
threads keep separate current directory contexts ... Linux can do it, but if
used, the pthreads library will fail). I'm looking at building my own thread
library right now to handle some of the limitations the current models have.

 

[Roy]

The worlds major faiths make no such illusions about greed - it is still
one of the 7 deadly sins.....more at =>

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/109/story_10952_1.html

Not that I'm any better than anyone, here. I thought it would help clear
Greed out of your minds I was brought up differently & greed is as
ugly as any other sin., if not the ugliest............................

Roy Q.T. ~ US/NCU ~ E.E. Technician
[have tools, will travel]

 

[Andrew Gabriel]

Beyond a certain CPU speed, other factors have a greater influence on
thru-put. Connection lengths become important, as do parasitic circuit
elements. AMD first exploited this in emphasizing CPU architecture
rather than brute speed.

Possibly in the x86 arena, but this idea originated elsewhere;
Sun UltraSPARC IV predated it, and the earlier work of Afara Websystems
which eventually led to Sun's original 8-core Niagra SPARC chip.

Multiple CPUs and cache memory on chip are
good examples of this. A CPU cannot operate faster than the rate at
which data is supplied to it.

Present 32bit operating systems are not even capable of directly
addressing over 4GB of memory, even as memory is becoming faster and

32 bit OS's have been accessing over 4GB memory for well over a decade.
Even PC's, which were probably the last hardware platform to do so,
introduced Intel's PAE with the Pentium Pro (1995?).

cheaper. There are very few applications that can use the advantage of
a 64bit OS, even when it's limited to using more memory.

Databases and other applications accessing over 4Gb of data are
not exactly rare.

In Windows XP x64, MS resorted to WoW, (Windows on Windows), to allow 32
bit application to work properly. (It's still one of the better OSs
Microsoft has produced.)

OK, 64 bit Windows might be of limited use, but don't tarnish all
OS's with such a claim. The x86/PC architecture allows 32 bit and
64 bit applications to run together on the same OS (OS permitting).

With the present crop of PCs, the eventual bottleneck may become the
BIOS. It's been twiddled, patched, augmented but still is much like the
one produced by IBM for the first "personal computer".

I don't think any PC OS's still use the BIOS once booted for
at least a decade, and in some cases nearer 2 decades.

Getting our computers to do more faster, will depend more on better
input-output mechanisms and better applications, rather than on faster CPUs.

and better OS's (in multiple respects).

 

[Don Klipstein]

What difference does it make if we release more carbon? At the current
level of 0.003% of the atmosphere,

Make that .038% by volume, .0575% by weight.

a doubling would be virtually undetecable -
except for plants who would say "Yum!"

Current level of CO2 accounts for anywhere from 9 to 26% of
current "greenhouse effect" (warming of the planet from a level that would
exist if not for any greenhouse gases at all including water vapor).

How well have plants fared now that atmospheric CO2 content is about 36%
above pre-industrial-revolution levels? It appears to me that the
limiting factors are water, daylight and favorable temperatures more than
CO2 content in the atmosphere.

- Don Klipstein ([email protected])

 

[krw]

The worlds major faiths make no such illusions about greed - it is still
one of the 7 deadly sins.....more at =>

Dumb shit, greed is what motivates us to get out of bed in the
morning and is *NO* sin. I believe the word you're looking for is

http://www.beliefnet.com/story/109/story_10952_1.html

Not that I'm any better than anyone, here. I thought it would help clear
Greed out of your minds I was brought up differently & greed is as
ugly as any other sin., if not the ugliest............................

Uglier than murder? Wot a maroon!